“There’s no place for us here.” Words spoken by Naomi to her friend and former lover Gia, it’s a sad and painful truth expressed as much, if not with greater weight by filmmaker Lucky Kuswandi, as he surveys the metropolitan cacophony quickly building in his native Jakarta. Looking on with a melancholic, almost elegiac gaze, Kuswandi follows the stories of three women over the course of a single night as they search for stability and comfort in a city that through commerce, globalisation and religion has become the easiest place to disconnect from everyone around them. In his latest effort, Kuswandi ruminates on how possible it is to find something worth holding onto In the Absence of the Sun.
It would be tempting to regard this as the overture to some sort of caustic invective levelled against Jakarta and the unstoppable tide of modern times that has come reshape it. And, in honesty, there is an element of truth to that idea. However, Kuswandi doesn’t give over to such a bitter perspective in his film. Point of fact, In the Absence of the Sun is perhaps more aptly described as a love letter to the city, one that finds a comfort and reassurance within its quieter spaces, its simpler customs, and the people that populate its streets. However, Kuswandi’s clear affection for his native city is mature enough to recognise its faults alongside its strengths, and so there is certainly a degree of negativity in the view presented in aspects of the city, which are the aspects the filmmaker clearly wishes to address in his depiction. Many of the peripheral characters pursue lives of superficiality, engaging with what’s new and cool. Everyone has to have a Blackberry (two, actually, since the reception in the city is so bad); everyone has to shop in the most expensive stores (one of our leads, Indri, carries an empty bag from such a place for the sake of appearance); everyone shares pictures of themselves enjoying nights out in top restaurants on Path (even though doing so will mean they effectively ignore the people they are actually with).
These problems sounds pretty familiar, don’t they?
There is an implied accusation that the citizens of Jakarta have forgotten their roots to a degree, wandering the streets and behaving like tourists because, as Naomi says, “Things get easier when we pretend to be foreigners.” In the pursuit of growth and development, Jakarta seems to be intentionally shaking off its own identity, so its restaurants sell only imported items, from the food to the water (“bottled in Fiji, it just tastes better.”). A later sequence of a late night street marketplace shows the impact of such practice, with a dearth of customers and many vendors at their stalls, bored and asleep.
The women that take the primary focus in Kuswandi’s film cast three separate, though occasionally passing stories, which together paint a picture of a yearning for some kind of connection. In one of the stories, there is Indri (Ina Panggabean), a towel girl at a local gym who has taken to Internet dating to help her find someone. With a low-level job and little in the way of current prospects, she seems to be holding to a more childish hope of a wealthy man to come along, sweep her up and take her away from her dismal life. However, such plans fall apart on this night in a way all too common in Internet dates from the movies. Her prospective Prince Charming is not who he claims to be (he really isn’t), leaving her despondent and heartbroken, wandering the streets in uncomfortable shoes she stole for the evening.
Another story begins with Mrs Surya (Dayu Wijanto), an older woman recently widowed, who brings herself to start clearing out her deceased husband’s clothes. In doing so, she discovers a note in his wallet, bearing a phone number and the name “Sofia”. Understandably struck by this evidence of her husband’s infidelity, Mrs Surya decides to try and find the woman named on the paper, which also bears the name of the Lone Star Hotel. She books herself in for the night, realising in the process that it is a “love hotel,” which normally only rents rooms for a few hours. Here, Mrs Surya spends the evening preparing to confront the marital interloper, though her plans change as she learns more about who she is.
These three stories present something familiar to all, beyond the vague boundaries of social status or sexual orientation. Everyone feels the need to feel connected to another person, and the difficulty inherent to that task is lost on no one who has ever tried to do so. Perhaps the best that people can hope for is to find what fleeting connections they can, for however long they can, at places like the Lone Star Hotel.
Like many a love letter writ in film, In the Absence of the Sun delivers an affectionate, though bittersweet ode to its subject: Jakarta, a city that is quickly developing to the point of cultural fracture. More than this, though, Kuswandi’s film is about longing, the deep aching need for a connection between people, which becomes increasingly more difficult in a space so easy to lose sight of one another. Kuswandi’s clear warmth for his city speaks volumes, and his characters present a beautifully melancholic picture of people trying their best to hold onto something resolute in the growing dissonance that surrounds them.
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